Holiday Decoration

Like a celestial holiday decoration, a shell of gas and dust from an exploding star forms a colorful ball in this view from the Hubble and Chandra space observatories. Known as SNR B0509-67.5, it is about 160,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a companion galaxy to the Milky Way. It was born when a massive star exploded as a supernova about 400 years ago as seen from Earth. Today, it spans two dozen light-years and it continues to expand into space at more than 10 million miles per hour. This image combines visible-light views from Hubble (red ring) with X-ray views from Chandra (blue-green glow). [NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); CXC/SAO/J. Hughes]